To keep this post readably short, I won’t go over the long history of colorful and vile characters who’ve served in Congress at one time or another. I’ll just say voters can elect anybody they want to, and sometimes do, and let it go at that.
And also that polls through the years have consistently shown that Americans rate members of Congress somewhere below used car salesmen in respectability.
It’s axiomatic that respect is a two-way street; i.e., if you want respect, you have to give respect in return.
Congress is one of the last places on earth to go looking for respect, and you don’t expect to get any there. On Thursday, September 15, 2022, there occurred yet another incident driving that point home. The perpetrator this time was, of course, a Republican; these days incivility and in-your-face obnoxiousness is a GOP speciality.
Now let’s go to what happened. “A House Oversight hearing on climate erupted into disrespect on Thursday when a Republican lawmaker proceeded to yell and demean an expert who criticized the fossil fuel industry’s impact on the environment along with its role in Black and brown communities,” Huffington Post reported here.
What the expert knows and wishes to share, and the truth of the matters of which she spoke, have nothing to do with anything. This was about a congressman protecting vested economic interests no matter how harmful they are to society. (Congressmen used to defend slavery, too, before it was abolished.)
Raya Salter, a black woman, was talking about the fossil fuel industry’s impacts on minorities (a situation sometimes described as “environmental racism”) and low-income families (see, e.g., photo below), when Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), an oil-state Republican who gets campaign donations from oil companies (details here), began overtalking her, throwing in a racist sneer (“boo”) for good measure.
Later, after the hearing, he called her an “unhinged climate activist,” a term Republicans like to use against anyone who challenges their head-in-sand approach toward what is very obviously an impending crisis, some of which is already here, but only beginning.
This is what set Higgins off: Calling out his favorite industry’s role in the climate crisis. Saying there is a climate crisis. Salter is a woman. She’s black. She defends the poor and marginalized. Republicans don’t like any of those.
This is what they want: Rich white men run things, and the rest of us are supposed to keep our mouths shut.
